Obituary: 'Beacon of hope' Dr. Gurdev Singh Gill left a wealthy legacy for his household and neighborhood

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When Gurdev Singh Gill got here throughout an issue that impacted the well being and well-being of his neighborhood, the New Westminster physician wasn’t afraid to behave.

Gill, who was Canada’s first medical physician of Indian descent and was the primary Indian scholar to graduate from the College of B.C.’s medical faculty, died final week, at age 92.

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He’s remembered by B.C.’s South Asian neighborhood as a trailblazer within the areas of drugs, grassroots activism and philanthropy. 

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One night in 1999, Gill was on a go to to his ancestral village of Kharoudi, India which he had left 50 years earlier when he moved to Canada.

The retired physician was sitting exterior with an previous buddy. However he couldn’t benefit from the go to — the odor of uncooked sewage on the street was insufferable. So, Gill determined to do one thing.

“He realized about wastewater remedy administration and sanitization himself,” his grandson Imran Gill informed Postmedia Information. “I’ve by no means seen an individual so pushed in my life.”

In the course of the subsequent two years, Gill raised $150,000 to put in a septic system, working water, and a remedy plant in Kharoudi. The infrastructure improved the general public well being of your complete village, with childhood illness dropping dramatically afterward.

Underneath the auspices of the Indo-Canadian Friendship Society of B.C., 26 different villages in Punjab had been supplied with higher entry to consuming water, waste-water remedy vegetation, sewage disposal programs, paved concrete roads, photo voltaic road lighting, and computer systems and know-how in native colleges.

Earlier than its deal with enhancing residing circumstances in rural Indian communities, Gill based the Friendship Society in 1976, initially, to enhance race relations in Canada.

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“When Gurdev migrated to Canada in 1947, folks of color weren’t allowed to vote in municipal elections,” mentioned his grandson, Imran Gill.

Throughout his time in medical faculty, Gurdev Singh Gill co-founded the East Indian Welfare Affiliation with the physician collaborating in delegations in Ottawa within the Sixties that satisfied the federal authorities to make immigration extra equitable.

Ultimately, Gill grew to become the primary individual of Indian origins to apply drugs in Canada in 1956.

“His New Westminster workplace was greater than a conventional physician’s workplace – it was a neighborhood corridor,” mentioned his grandson.

Indo-Canadians throughout Metro Vancouver got here to Gill for extra than simply medical remedy, but additionally for steering on easy methods to efficiently combine into B.C. society.

“At the moment, South Asian households who immigrated to Canada didn’t know the place to begin, for a lot of of them, English was their second language,” mentioned Imran Gill.

“My grandfather had come to Canada at 18, labored at a mill, and went on to turn out to be educated. He was like a beacon of hope for the neighborhood and he suggested many sufferers on what kind of jobs or different alternatives had been accessible to them.”

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After 40 years of working towards drugs Gill retired – however not from his life’s work of serving to others.

Till his loss of life, Gill had been spending six months a yr overseeing the friendship society’s initiatives in rural India.

To today, his 38-year-old grandson says he stays in awe of the legacy his grandfather left.

“He was bigger than life,” mentioned Imran Gill. “He was so dedicated to creating a distinction in what he did on daily basis. Even proper till he handed at 92 he was nonetheless working away, transferring a mile a minute.”

In August, Gill was in a position to meet his latest great-grandson, Arjun.

“Gurdev has not solely uplifted our household however ‘like a rising tide lifts all boats,’ your complete Indo-Canadian neighborhood of B.C. as properly,” mentioned grandson.

In 1990, Gill was acknowledged as the primary Indo-Canadian to obtain the Order of B.C., the very best type of recognition the province can bestow on its residents for enhancing the lives of others. In 2012, he acquired the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

– With information from Kevin Griffin

[email protected]

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